


I'll watch the ocean until the azure of your eyes is the last thing I'll remember

by soulhead



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dreams, M/M, Stranded into an island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 12:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulhead/pseuds/soulhead
Summary: For the 457th days in a row after the crash of his plane, Leo's eyelids open themselves to the distant sound of waves crashing on the shore. For just as many nights, he's been dreaming about the same young man whose unruly hair and soft smile seems to have been permanently imprinted on his mind.





	I'll watch the ocean until the azure of your eyes is the last thing I'll remember

For the 457 th  days in a row after the crash of his plane, Leo's eyelids open themselves to the distant sound of waves crashing on the shore. Laying on his left side, he has nothing else to observe but the swift movements of the wind sliding through the thick and numerous palm trees a few meters away of him. When he shifts on his back and observes his surroundings he sees nothing but rudimentary equipments, scattered across ancients ruins that are devoured by an ever-growing vegetation.

A few seconds pass where he can't recall where he is, wondering why he is waking up in the middle of what seems to be the remains of a construction from another civilization instead of in the middle of a hotel room like he should be.

How could he not be disorientated, when just a moment ago he was dreaming about being led by _ his _ hand through the endless streets of a nameless city that he never visited. They must have passed by a dozens of historical monuments covered by a light coat of snow, walked by just as much streets and avenues. Those were filled with noises, with bustling shops and the rich odors of restaurants serving food from all the five continents. Yet, all he could distinctly remember was the warmth emitting from the hand of the person that lead him through this labyrinth of paved alleys. They were so soft, igniting sparks with each touches. When finally they had stepped into a coffee shop just for a moment to warm themselves with hot beverages, he discovered without surprise his lips were just as soft, just as inviting as _ he _ looked with his oversized coat that made him look incredibly cuddly.

Even now, after a dozen of minutes have passed since he came back to consciousness, Lionel's mind is still distant, his fingers brushing lightly over his own mouth as he swear he still can taste the delicate mix of cloves, cinnamon and peppermint he had discovered on _ his _ tongue.

Reality finally slowly creeps back in his bones as his eyes starts to focus on the glimpses of the sky he can perceive through the roof over him. It seems his mind suddenly decided to work once again, as numerous memories come to his mind when he looks at it. Of course, how could he have forgotten, even for a few seconds ? He spent days and days selecting the right trunks for this roof, cutting them into the right size, transporting them to his shelter to then tie it all together and laboriously hosting it over the columns of the ruins that still stands and that maintains the roof over his head.

Maybe this island finally succeeded in making him lose his mind and this sudden amnesia is the first sign of it, he ironically thinks.

Still groggy, he lets his feet connect themselves to the ruin's floor made of old ocher bricks, ever so mild, no matter which time of the day it is. His sight glosses slowly over one of the small lizards that has made its habits to climb one of the pillar next to him and watches its rapid movements absentmindedly. As he puts his legs into a crossed position, he exhales deeply, willing his sleepiness to go away. Now, with his mind is a little bit clearer, he lets himself enjoy the gentle refreshing breeze that caress his face and he focus on the way his heartbeat starts to slow down progressively, at ease.

The man he was before, the one he stopped being when he resigned himself to the fact that a rescue mission would never come, could have never even imagined feeling this sense of belonging, of rightness, in the middle of this deserted island he used to curse at.

This shelter isn't the perfect accommodation, nothing could be hundreds of kilometers away from the constant comfort civilization brings, but it’s almost perfect for him. Almost, because he still feels a pang in his heart when he catches himself observing the second stool he built, next to the wonky table, just big enough for two people. A pair of furniture he had meticulously confectioned for _ him _ when he first started to establish himself in this shelter, yet to this day they still stay unused.

Yes, it's not perfect, but the ruins he established himself in are still his foyer, even if something, _ someone _ is missing to make this shelter, theirs.

Ever so slowly, the distant noise of the seagulls become more persistent, a sign of the rising day. Forced into movement by this noise, he sets himself to get up and he eats in a hurry a meager breakfast consisting of half a coconut and a sweet potato he had cooked the day before.

It must be almost time now.

With pressing steps, Lionel makes his way toward the beach. Soon enough, after pushing one more leaf of philodendron from his way, his face is hit with the enticing breeze carried by the ocean, rich with salt and iodine. The shore, just as his shelter, is a scenery he knows all too well and he walks without hesitation in direction of the curved Araucaria, the one under which he always waits for _ him _. He lets himself fall heavily on the ground and let time pass while taking a few gulps of the water bottle he carried with him.

As he slowly let his eyelids close themselves once again, he indulges himself in reviving flashes of the dream he had this night. It’s a daily ritual he follows almost religiously, his own mind inviting him to revisit once again what was nothing more than a piece of his imagination.

Every night is different, offering him visions more intricate, more enticing than the precedent ones. Sometime he gets a glimpse in the life of a version of himself who pursued university studies to join professions he never thought he could. Sometime he was born in a different country and couldn't even understand his own thought. On rare occasions, only imperceptibly small details of his life before the crash were altered. But in all those different versions of his life he discovered, there was one thing that did never change: he was next to _ him _.

_ Him, him, him _...Always in his dreams. Antoine : the unique constant in all those reveries and the most vivid part of each of them, maybe the only part worth remembering. The focus of almost all his thoughts, awake or asleep. Tonight, he was leading him through a foreign city, but nights ago they were working together frantically on a last minute project of their publishing firm. It doesn't change anything for Lionel, no matter the context in which his dreams take place, he observes them with the same frantic fervor and relives those dreams whenever he can.

Antoine's always so beautiful, the ghost of his fingers still sending shiver to his body, his eyes always carry the same mirthful glint, the same soft smile and he has yet to meet a version of himself that doesn't succumb to it instantly.

His attention is brought back to focus when he hears two sets of distinct footsteps approaching him from his left. The firsts one, he recognizes, they are light and agile and this simple noise is enough to bring the beginning of a smile into his face. However, this noise he's so familiar with come to a halt a few meter from him, while the second pair of footsteps, the one unknown to him, soon reaches his level.

Despite this, his eyes never quit the horizon he has been watching absentmindedly. It's been so long that he hasn't seen anybody but _him_.To be frank with himself, he wouldn't know how to begin a discussion with a stranger and so he waits, unmoving, for this person to make his presence known.

“Hel-Hello Mister.” A wavering voice exclaims. When he quits his contemplation of the moving sea he's not surprised to see this voice belongs to a young man. He looks like a teenager, the slight roundness of his face making him seem absolutely nonthreatening. His brows are furrowed almost together and he's waiting with shifting eyes Lionel's answer, balancing himself from one foot to another.

“What do you want ?” Lionel asks, intrigued and not accustomed to have a stranger interfering in his time with _him_.

“Uhm...Hi sir, I don't know if you remember but you had your tent just next to mine back in the camp...” the kid pauses for a moment, probably hoping for a hint of recognition to appear on his face, but it never does. “I-I'm Ansu and uhm- Antoine told me you could maybe repair my fishing spear? I- I let it fall when I carrying it on my back when I was hiking the cliff on the north.” he concludes in one breath by letting Lionel stares at the fragments that once was a harpoon, holding them out to him in a silent plea to repair it.

“You can use it to fuel tonight's fire, there's nothing to salvage...” he answers with curt word.

“But...-But Antoine was going to show me how to spot where he fishes the mackerels !” he says loudly, letting his disappointment overrides his shyness for a moment at Lionel's answer.

With that, Lionel makes the mistake of looking into _him_, Antoine, who supervises their exchange. When their stares cross, Lionel feels the tension that coursed through his own body since the beginning of his exchange with Ansu leaves instantly. There goes his plans to be stern with Antoine for leading a stranger to their meeting point : out of the window in seconds and never to be seen again.

“Come back tomorrow and I'll give you a new one.” he ends up saying to Ansu.

“Seriously ? Thank you ! What- What do you want in exchange ?”

“Nothing, now go and don't tell anyone I helped you with it !” he scowls in his direction in hope to regain his composure.

As he expected, the young man bolts always, an almost comical look of fright painting his face.

“Not like I have time for that...” he mutters as he lets himself falls to the sand once again.

“Oh really ? Smoldering at the horizon takes up all of your time ?” Antoine teases as he finally approach him.

“What, you waited in line to have a harpoon that I need to repair as well ?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t traumatize Ansu.” Antoine says with a small smile.

“Traumatizing him ? You’re the one who made him climb the cliff !”

“What tells you he was following me ?” Antoine answers, in an overtly affronted voice.

To that, Lionel only scoffs with a knowing smile.

“Alright, he was following me.” Antoine admits while rolling his eyes “Anyway, I snuck out a mango for you from the camp's reserve, I knew you would be a sourpuss this morning, so consider it as a peace offering !”

Lionel raises an eyebrows when he see the fruit, a mess of red, yellow and green. It's been a while he hadn't had the opportunity to eat such fruits, the camp rarely letting him harvest any of the mango trees next to their territory.

“The others won't be happy if they learn you took a mango just for you, especially if it's to share it with the crazy loner of the island.”

“You would tell them ?”

“Only if you don't give me the biggest half of the mango.”

“Fantastic then, looks like your agenda's free for me finally, now cut it while I take a quick dip !”

With this, Antoine quickly grazes his lips against his, before throwing the small fruit into his hand and going straight to the ocean.

Unable to be exasperated by Antoine's bossiness, Lionel quickly make his way back to his shelter to retrieve his knife and one of the multiple bamboo trunk he stores there to start the harpoon. He wastes no time looking over the ruins and it's every details. Unlike this morning, he has more important things to do.

Realistically, he knows nothing will happen to Antoine during his absence, but a part of his mind always goes into overdrive, making his palms sweats and accelerating his heartbeat into an unpleasant way when he feels like he's failing to respect his self-imposed duty of watching over him during their time together.

Once he's back into the beach, he's relieved to see the characteristic mop of golden hair hanging out from surface of the ocean, swimming without a care. His heart made lighter with this reassuring sight, Lionel settles himself under the shade of one of the numerous palm tree that litter the beach and he busies himself into his work on the bamboo trunk. He lets the mango unattended next to him, knowing that Antoine's “quick dip” will probably turns into a hour long swimming session and that already cutting it would only make turn it into a feast for the flies.

The morning passes like that, Antoine stays hours in the ocean, exploring the coral barrier underneath the surface of the ocean and Lionel focus on sculpting a spear sharp enough for Ansu. As he lets his mind focus on the fast and repetitive gesture he follows while carving into the wood, his mind wanders to hundreds of days ago.

457 th  days have passed since they crashed on this island and he has become such a far cry of what he used to be in the beginning. In the past, he had helped in the making of too many rafts to keep a count of, he had confectioned elaborate traps to catch animals as big as boars. Before, he had a spark in him, a desire to escape this island, a certitude that a rescue mission would find them one way or another. His survival instinct made him think he had no time to wonder about the dreams he had about one of the other survivor of the camp. He had to build, to hunt, to explore. But then, the young man inhabiting his dreams, whom he knew the name before they even formally introduced themselves to one another on the island, started to gravitate next to him. As the days passed progressively, the frenetic need to find a solution to escape this island was simply relegated to an after-thought.

Nowadays, whenever the camp relies on his craftsmanship to build trap or any kinds of tools, he's almost tempted to refuse, when he knows that what he used to be able to craft in barely one day now takes him three to four days, his lack of motivation making his every gesture a chore. It's on moments like these, when he realizes how much this island changed him over time, that a part of his mind suggest him that the Lionel he used to be hundred of days ago was also a figment of his subconscious dreams.

“Antoine ! You're wetting me !” he exclaims suddenly, extirpated from his reveries by the droplets of water falling rapidly from Antoine's drenched hair.

Uncaring of Lionel's complaint, Antoine let himself fall down the ground, sprawling himself over him, not a care in the word for the sand that’ll cling to his skin and settling his head over Lionel's chest.

They stay like that, unmoving, Lionel watching the way Antoine's stomach rise and fall rapidly, still breathless after swimming for so long.

“You had a good swim ?”

Antoine nods his head in affirmation before a comfortable silence install itself between them as Antoine' breathes even out.

“Hm ?” Lionel says when he hears the young man in his arms mumbles intelligibly.

“Did you dream about us tonight ?”

  
“Yes, I did...”

“Can you tell me about the last ones you had ?” pleads Antoine while taking Lionel's hands into his.

And so, he tells him about the hundreds of version of themselves that met. Of course, he recounts him his last dream and he soon learns the city they had visited in his dream was Antoine's hometown.

He doesn't stop here and tells him about this small festival they went to a few days ago in his dreams. He shares with Antoine the tale of the nights they spent there, lost in the music, the taste of sugary cocktails on Antoine's tongue and how timeless everything around them seemed to be.

Antoine's interest in his dreams soon starts to transform into fascination when Lionel tells him about how he began to dream a few days ago about scrubbing the wooden deck of a ship. He describes in length how its sails were so imposing that the white of the sails seemed to melt into the cloud's sky. He tries to make Antoine laugh by re-acting in an over-exaggerate way how they crossed path when they both were sent to the hold of the ship, punished by the captain for not working fast enough.

And as time passes, he notices that Antoine's eyes have started to droops and soon enough, his breath evens out. With a peacefully sleeping Antoine by his side and the ever repeating sight of the waves crashing by the shore, Lionel loses tracks of time.

“Leo” Antoine says softly, voice still marred with sleep, as he finally stirs awake after what feels like an eternity.

“Hmm ?”

“Do you think I could- I could maybe stop going back to the camp after I visit you ?”

“What do you mean ?” Lionel asks, needing a confirmation he didn't misunderstand Antoine question as his breath catches.

“I-...You've always told me there was a place for me in your shelter...And I'm just...I'm tired of having to go on our separate ways every single time, you know ?”

Yes, he thinks, he knows. It's been almost a hundred of days since he decided to be a hermit in these old ruins, tired of the frenzy and the tensions in the camp, tired of pretending he still believed they could escape this island. It's been just as many days that he has patiently waited for Antoine to join him.

“Hum- But what about your friends, won't they worry about you not coming back to the camp ?” he forces himself to ask this question, thinking about the protective way Antoine looked at Ansu this morning.

“I told them where I would stay, I-mean, if you're alright with this ? I can just stay here for a few days and then come back to the ca-”

Antoine's voice starting to grow more unsure as seconds pass. As an answer, Lionel pulls himself over Antoine and hold him close, breathing in the rich smell of the sea clinging to his skin and hiding his smile into Antoine's collarbone.

“You're crushing me !” his lover protests and Lionel swears the sound of his frantic giggles under him almost cover the sound of the ocean.

***

On the 458 th  days, Leo opens his eyes and as he turns over to try to catch a few more minutes of sleep, his chest hits Antoine's body. It should be uncomfortable to be in such close space to someone with a blanket over them, both their skin recovered by a thin layer of sweat. Lionel finds that he doesn't care and he indulges himself into watching his own fingers tracing soothing caresses over Antoine's arm.

Outside of the temple, Lionel knows there's a forest festering with life, a camp of survivor still working their hardest to find a solution to make their way back home. If he was acting sorely on his survival instincts, his mind would be absorbed by urgent plans for traps to build, for more effective ways to gather the rain's water, for new, more viable and resistant rafts to invent.

But here, in these ruins he established his shelter in, he finds he has everything he needs cradled into his arms.

And so, he closes his eyes once again and welcome back the slumber that consumes him.

**Author's Note:**

> if you leave comments or kudos I'll love you forever !


End file.
